Tag Archives: literature

Here is a continuation of my analysis, ideas and comments concerning the story and the punishment of Prometheus, and an attempt to explain or interpret plausibly what happened between Prometheus and Zeus, and how Prometheus and his actions ought to be assessed and viewed.

I will consider the story of the one they called Zeus in Greek from the point of view of Euhemerism, which states that the gods were real great men or great heroes of the past who accomplished great things and were deified after they died.

According to this perspective, Zeus/Jupiter may be regarded as a very great man of the past who had the most advanced way of thinking, the most advanced teachings and the most advanced knowledge in the world and at the period of time he lived in.

As I mentioned in the previous posts about this topic, Prometheus would be best regarded as a mediocre man with little preparation or with limited potentiality for greatness or creativity, who lived alongside the great man who was later called Zeus or Jupiter, and who by jealousy, hubris, conceit, attachment to old ways of thinking, and by misguided actions, betrayed and tried to trick and hurt that great man who was his contemporary.

I will try to compare Prometheus (as accurately as possible) to historical characters or potential historical characters in order to give a better idea about his character, his personality, and his historical role.

The following comparison is not totally accurate, but it gives an idea about someone Prometheus could be approximately and reasonably compared to.

If Prometheus had lived at the time of Pythagoras, he would have been someone (more or less) comparable to Cylon of Croton.

Here is how Iamblichus describes Cylon in his Life of Pythagoras:

“Cylon, a Crotoniate and leading citizen by birth, fame and riches, but otherwise a difficult, violent, disturbing and tyrannically disposed man, eagerly desired to participate in the Pythagorean way of life. He approached Pythagoras, then an old man, but was rejected because of the character defects just described. When this happened Cylon and his friends vowed to make a strong attack on Pythagoras and his followers. Thus a powerfully aggressive zeal activated Cylon and his followers to persecute the Pythagoreans to the very last man. Because of this Pythagoras left for Metapontium and there is said to have ended his days.”

Cylon had no notable historical importance or greatness by himself, but he is remembered because he interacted with a very great thinker, mathematician and philosopher named Pythagoras. He tried to follow Pythagoras, but when he couldn’t or was rejected, he tried to hurt the great man.

The next comparison involves a fictional or hypothetical character (comparable to Prometheus) who would have lived at the time of Isaac Newton. This character (let’s just call him P) would have belonged to a somewhat well-to-do family, and would have been a student at Trinity College, Cambridge, between 1668 and 1672, or (if not a student) would have been someone whose job or (non-academic) work was related to Trinity College and Cambridge.

P would have made the acquaintance of Newton at Cambridge, who sometimes invited him to his office or quarters, and showed him some of his mathematical and physical papers, and some blueprints or sketches related to the reflecting telescope he was designing.

P had no interest in and no potential for mathematical, philosophical, intellectual or scientific innovation or creativity. He generally had conservative religious and philosophical ideas and opinions, most likely reading very few books and sticking to the ideas of ancient thinkers such as Aristotle.

P visited Newton and inquired about his work and papers. He became more and more jealous of Newton, realizing or seeing that Newton might publish his papers and design a new telescope to be shown to the Royal Society in the near future, thus becoming known and famous and an important person. Newton started to notice P’s attitude and his envious words and behavior, but he didn’t give it too much attention, and tried to gradually distance himself from P, and to conceal his work and papers from others until he was ready to publish them or make them known.

People were able to write philosophical, scientific or pseudo-scientific papers at the time of Newton, and telescopes existed before Newton, but Newton was unique at the period of time when he was alive, in the sense that he was a very great man capable of great creativity and innovation in science, mathematics, (natural) philosophy, and the design of telescopes or scientific instruments (Newton’s interest in alchemy and occult studies will not be discussed here). This relates to the idea that humans might have known elementary or rudimentary ways to use fire (and related technology) at the time of Zeus and Prometheus, but Zeus was the one capable of using fire (and related technology or applications) in very creative, useful and innovative ways.

One day, P waited for an opportunity when Newton left his office for a short period of time without closing the door. He went into Newton’s office, or probably sent a close acquaintance or a servant of his to Newton’s office, and took away a number of Newton’s scientific and mathematical papers, as well as a sketch and a piece or two of the telescope Newton was designing.

It is evident that Newton was very angry and upset when he saw that his papers and work had been stolen. He knew from the previous behavior of P that he was the culprit. He tried to talk to P, and he even reached out to P’s family, and tried to negotiate with them for weeks in order to get back what was stolen. P denied having anything to do with what happened, and even feigned to be shocked and offended when Newton said he just wanted his work and papers back and he wouldn’t hold anyone accountable and forget the whole thing if everything was returned.

Fortunately Newton had duplicates or drafts of most of his papers, but he had to rewrite some of the papers, and to remake the stolen pieces of the telescope he was building. He also had to keep quiet and wait for some time before he could get justice for himself and retribution for the culprit. During that time, P hid what he had stolen in his house. He sometimes showed the papers to some people he knew well, and tried to sell the telescope pieces and some of the papers but was unsuccessful. He tried to read Newton’s scientific papers but couldn’t understand them. He scribbled some nonsensical words or some poems or songs on some of the papers, and threw one or two papers away, but he kept most of them hidden.

Newton had to wait more than a decade, until he became a productive member of the Royal Society, or until he published the Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, and became a known, recognized and important scientific figure. Then he was able to act appropriately, exerted pressure on P and his family, and made P give him back what he had stolen and admit everything. P was deservedly, rightfully and justly punished and sent to prison for what he had done. Newton even had to punish appropriately one or two of P’s relatives for being involved in what had happened and for being P’s accomplices.

P was a mediocre person who acted out of jealousy and envy and tried to trick and hurt Newton, without benefitting anybody by his actions. Perhaps many centuries later or more than three millennia later, the details of what happened between P and Newton would become unclear, blurred or lost, and some people or writers would state or conclude (wrongly) that P was a benefactor or a hero who tried to help humans by his act of theft, and that Newton acted hastily or unfairly by punishing P, thus accusing Newton of concealing scientific knowledge and technology away from humans and of being unhelpful to humanity.

And here is in my opinion another fairly close comparison.

If Prometheus had lived at the time of Jesus, he would have been comparable to someone named Judas Iscariot.

This comparison might be regarded as somewhat controversial. It also seems that some writers are trying nowadays to rehabilitate Judas.

Whether one is religious or not, I think it ought to be evident that Jesus was the greatest man at the period of time when he was alive. Whether opinions and views about Judas change or not, I think that like Prometheus, he ought to be considered as someone who lived in the presence of a man of the greatest historical importance, and like Prometheus, he didn’t have intrinsic historical importance or greatness, but his actions were a “catalyzer” or a “catalyst” for subsequent important events.

From the ancient narratives, stories and myths about Zeus, it is known that he lived a long life and died at an advanced age. By the nature of his life, the one they called Zeus in Greek was able to hold Prometheus accountable and to justly punish him while he was alive.

As an additional remark, at the end of the nineteenth century, in his introduction to the Prometheus Bound tragic play of Aeschylus, the philologist Nicolaus Wecklein described Prometheus as a “short-sighted forethinker”. Since the etymology of the name Prometheus either signifies “afterthought” or refers to stealing and theft, it would be best and more plausible to emphasize the meaning of “thief” or “theft”.

I hope this analysis provided reasonable, coherent, valid and correct explanations and interpretations concerning the story of Prometheus and his punishment. Hopefully additional or better arguments or some new evidence would emerge in the future, confirming or corroborating the analysis given in this post and the previous ones.

I was fifteen- soon to be sixteen- years old ; I had been reading (important) books about science, physics, philosophy , and other similar topics, and all those ideas in my head intermingled and inspired me to write a poem involving particle physics and particle collisions and combining elements of science and philosophy .

I wrote the poem in French , using the French alexandrine poetic meter of twelve syllables, but I didn’t follow the poetic rules very closely.

I will provide the final version of the poem here , with a line by line English translation. Different people have different tastes and opinions , I hope it will be liked .

The hydrogen-1 atom mentioned in the title of the poem is also called “protium” , but this last word is not much used in French. Protium is the most common hydrogen isotope, having one proton ( and one electron) and no neutrons.

A proton is supposed to be talking or telling the story in the poem . I think I was a little inspired by the poem ” Le Bateau ivre ” by Arthur Rimbaud .

Here it is :

Bombardement d’atomes par un proton d’hydrogène1HBombardment of atoms by a proton of protium1H

I will continue my analysis, ideas and comments concerning the punishment of Prometheus, how it was viewed by various writers and thinkers, and what likely happened between Prometheus and Zeus.

A painting of Titian in 1548-1549 ( see the image below), representing the giant Tityus being punished in a way similar to that by which Prometheus was punished, was mistakenly thought to represent Prometheus for decades and even centuries, and was an inspiration for later painters who represented Prometheus (based on the erroneous identification of Titian’s painting). Tityus was punished for having violated or having tried to violate Leto/Latona, the mother of Apollo and Artemis/Diana.

Perhaps if the details of the story and the accurate sequence of events which led to the theft of fire by Prometheus were known ( see my previous post about the same topic), they would show and prove that Prometheus did not help or benefit anyone by his theft. The actions of Prometheus were caused by envy, jealousy, greed and treachery, he misused the thing he had stolen, played with it carelessly or ignorantly with no beneficial or creative results, and consequently he deserved to be chastised just as Tityus and other characters such as Tantalus deserved to be punished for their actions .

The view that Prometheus was a good benefactor and an important figure started at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, when a number of known writers, poets and thinkers more of less promoted this trend, which was partly based on the misinterpretation of the play Prometheus Bound (presumably) by Aeschylus. I’ll take a look at some of these views and comment on them.

In his youth , Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote a poem about Prometheus. In Goethe’s poem, Prometheus mentions his childhood and the disappointment of the prayers he addressed to the gods. From the poem it looks as if Prometheus had a deep feeling which led him to free himself from the gods.
This statement bears an amount of anachronism and contradiction with the mythological story of the gods: when Prometheus was a child , the future gods were still overpowered and ‘swallowed’ by their father (the Titan Cronus), then when Zeus grew up he stood up to his father and freed his siblings. As a child and as a man too, Prometheus followed the older established order of the Titans and must have followed any form of older religion or mentality or way or thinking related to the Titans. According to the mythological stories he was of the same generation as Zeus and the Olympians gods but he stayed with the old order of the Titans. It was Zeus/Jupiter who created a newer order , gave his brothers and sisters their positions according to their powers and abilities, and brought stability to the world. Prometheus didn’t accept this new order which was based on new ideas related to justice and pragmatism. If Prometheus was praying to anyone, then it is more reasonable to suppose that he prayed to whatever deities the Titans prayed to, and he disliked Zeus and his family and offspring for leaving the old ways of praying and thinking of the Titans and for innovating and creating new ways.
With time Goethe abandoned to a certain extent his interest for or liking of Prometheus. As he grew old, Goethe was compared by several writers to an Olympian god and to Zeus himself.
For example , Frederick Engels wrote in Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy :
“Goethe and Hegel, each of them was an Olympian Zeus in his own sphere, but they were neither of them quite free from German philistinism.”
And the German romantic writer Jean Paul (1763-1825) described Goethe as “the Olympian who rules the world from his throne” .

In the nineteenth century C.E., a number of writers and philosophers made unfounded allegations and extrapolations and began a certain trend which pictured Prometheus as a figure of free thought and anti-religion and a hater of all the gods. The fact is Prometheus himself was called a god and a Titan god .

When in some of his first writings Karl Marx tried to make of Prometheus a champion of anti-religion and a martyr of philosophy, portraying him as a freethinker who despised all gods, many critical remarks are in order : Marx read the play by Aeschylus and understood it literally, not taking into account that Aeschylus used a good amount of irony and intended to show Prometheus as delusional and arrogant. Marx also didn’t consider the fact that Prometheus was a Titan attached to an old form of ‘nobility’ , an old way of thinking and old traditions. When Prometheus said he hated all the gods , it’s reasonable to think that he meant by gods the people related to Zeus who were called (Olympian) gods and who represented a new order and a new way of thinking. He hated the Olympian gods, but he surely didn’t hate the Titan gods. In fact Prometheus was attached to these older Titan gods who stretched and ‘over-reached’ themselves more than they could and were limited in their sphere of action and were defeated, and he followed whatever old form of religion or belief which was accepted by the Titans. So the conclusions made by Marx about Prometheus’s freethinking and ‘atheism’ are extrapolated and unproven conjectures which seem to project the wishful ideals of Marx onto Prometheus.

Nietzsche tried for a while to interpret the story of Prometheus as involving someone who stood against divine power (i.e Zeus), someone who opposed the morality related to Christianity and Judaism, which was based on sin, and who showed that even sacrilege and theft can be dignified. Again I think this is wishful thinking by Nietzsche and an attempt to project on Prometheus his own aspirations , ideas and opinions. Prometheus disappeared from Nietzsche’s work together with the appearance of the philosopher’s new central character : the Übermensch.

I think the writer who went the furthest in his glorification of Prometheus was Percy Bysshe Shelley , who wrote the drama Prometheus Unbound and published it in 1820 .

The author of The Necessity of Atheism chose the wrong person to elevate to the post of hero or champion. Shelley ought to have taken into account the very plausible fact that Prometheus was most likely an intellectual mediocrity and someone who was attached to old traditions, old mentalities and probably an old form of religion related to the group of people he belonged too, the ones who were subsequently called Titans, who outreached themselves, were limited in their thinking and their actions, and who consequently lost their dominion and power and were defeated by Zeus and his siblings. Prometheus had nothing to do with freethinking , advanced thinking or technological innovation. He was no better than his fellow Titans (who were punished) other than by the fact that he tried to use guile and trickery, but he didn’t succeed at what he did. He did not benefit others by his act of theft, was outsmarted by Zeus and got what he deserved.

The poet or writer has the responsibility to tell the truth and give a fair and reliable account of past events, even if he does that in a literary, stylish or figurative way.
While calling Zeus/Jupiter “The Oppressor of Mankind” in his play, Percy Bysshe Shelley must have known that Zeus was called “The Lord of Justice”, “The patron of hospitality and guests” , “The keeper of oaths” , “Soter ,(Savior)”, “Jupiter Optimus Maximus Invictus” ( by the Romans), along with too many other epithets and names.
Shelley wrote a Hymn of Apollo. He praised the son but disliked the father, although Apollo’s father was known to be the ruler, the greatest and the most important of the Olympian gods . Perhaps some inconsistency is to be noticed here.
Moreover, according to Apollo’s mythology, after he was born he was known to have said : “May the lyre and the bow be dear to me forever , and I will prophesy to mortals the unerring will of Zeus”.
Shelley took a story told in ancient myths, poems, narratives and religions, a story which had plausibly true historical events as its basis, and he twisted that story and made the one who was known to have never been defeated or dethroned (i.e. Zeus/Jupiter , Optimus Maximus ,Victor, Invictus , Stator , as he was called by the Romans ) end up being vanquished. He also made the envious mediocrity who was defeated and justly punished look like the victor in events and conditions which never took place. He tried to represent Prometheus as some sort of dissenting intellectual or innovator who requested reforms, while the one who brought real reforms, changes and new ideas and equitable rules was Zeus/Jupiter, whereas Prometheus was a jealous, unexceptional individual following the older, established ways and traditional ideas of the Titans.
By misinterpreting the Prometheus Bound tragedy and by writing Prometheus Unbound, Shelley has likely done more harm than good, in the sense that he has recklessly distorted ancient known stories and events and he has acted irresponsibly, without caring about the veracity or the consequences of his writings.As an additional note , according to Wikipedia , “Paul Johnson, in his book Intellectuals , describes Shelley in a chapter titled “Shelley or the Heartlessness of Ideas “. In the book Johnson describes Shelley as an amoral person, who by borrowing money which he did not intend to return, and by seducing young innocent women who fell for him, destroyed the lives of everybody with whom he had interacted, including his own.”
This is to be contrasted with the mythological tales and stories about Zeus/Jupiter, the lord of justice who gave each his due, who ‘easily humbles the proud and raises the obscure, and easily straightens the crooked and blasts the proud’ (from Hesiod’s Works and Days).
Zeus had numerous relationships with many women, but he was known for taking care of and protecting the women who birthed his children, and his offspring , from Hercules to Apollo and Perseus and others, were regarded as heroes, gods, demi-gods and founders of dynasties who were helpful and beneficial to mortals and humans. Although he sometimes had disputes with his wife Hera, Zeus knew she was his wife, the principal and most important woman for him, and he always treated her accordingly , and always managed to get along and reconcile with her.

To be complete one should also consider the point of view ofEuhemerism, and it’s a relevant and important one .Euhemerism essentially states that gods were great men who were deified after their death, and seeks the source of mythology in history .According the this view, Prometheus would appear as a man with little preparation or with limited, misused potentiality for greatness or creativity, who lived alongside a really great man who was later called Zeus or Jupiter ( he was known by other names in other places and religions too), and who by jealousy, hubris, conceit, attachment to an old established order and old ways of thinking, and by misguided actions, betrayed and tried to trick and hurt the very great man who was his contemporary. Prometheus possibly helped Zeus or worked under his supervision for a short period of time, then he stole from him by jealousy and greed and was deservedly punished for it.As a very great man of the past, Zeus/Jupiter must have had the most advanced way of thinking, the most advanced teachings and the most advanced knowledge and ‘theories’ in the world he lived in.
I also think Zeus/Jupiter was the same person as one of the first important biblical patriarchs mentioned in the Old Testament, but his story was somewhat modified. Perhaps I will expand and develop this idea in the future.

Sometimes a man attached to a religion or a set of rules and moral prescriptions comparable or even similar to those recommended by Christianity, and having limited abilities and living in the presence of a real great man and innovator, may by jealousy, greed, arrogance and conceit, break the rules he is supposed to be attached to, and steal from the great man he is jealous of, trying foolishly to show he is strong and brave, keeping the thing he stole to himself or in his abode, failing to do anything creative or useful with it, thus somewhat contradicting himself and proving to be worthy of being punished.
If Prometheus ought to be made the symbol of anything, then he ought to be considered as the symbol of mediocrity, envy, jealousy, greed, trickery, cheating, antis-science, anti-innovation and attachment to old traditional established ideas and to old ways of thinking and acting.

For about two centuries a number of writers have inflated the story of Prometheus and taken it in different directions. Consequently it can be said that they have been responsible of imagining, following and honoring a false idol, since they made him a symbol of things he had nothing to do with.At times these were different and opposite ‘things’, such as being a symbol of irreligion and free thought, and being a symbol of religion more or less comparable to the founder of Christianity.

Perhaps these writers and thinkers should have taken the following guideline or principle into account:

When you don’t know the details of a (very ancient) story, or the sequence of events which caused something to take place, you should not jump into conclusions and produce speculative conjectures, project your own ideals or preconceptions on somebody, and/or make of somebody the symbol of things or qualities he has nothing to do with, especially when these conclusions and conjectures are based on uncertain and doubtful facts of the past, and when there are other facts or evidence providing more plausible and reasonable interpretations of the story or events in question.

As a consequence of all the arguments given above and in Part One of this topic, I think it is inappropriate and simply wrong to use the name of Prometheus for a series of books related to free thought and advanced cultural or philosophical subjects, because someone like Prometheus has simply nothing to do with these subjects. In fact I think it is someone with the intellect and the abilities of Zeus who would be more interested in and inclined towards reading books about advanced science, philosophy, and similar subjects .

The books and reference works I cited in my previous post about this topic are also relevant here.

At the beginning of this post I want to remark that Zeus (as well as characters related to him) is the name given by the ancient Greeks to ‘someone’ or to a deity who was followed or worshiped in many places in the ancient World and around the Mediterranean region by different names . Zeus was called Jupiter by the Romans, Amon-Ra by the Egyptians , etc , and Greek mythology and religion had their origins in or were influenced by other places or cultures: West Asia, the so-called Indo-Europeans , and most notably the Mediterranean and the Near East .

But I will generally use the Greek names since nowadays they are the most widely known .

The story of Prometheus and the narration of his punishment have been told and retold in different ways throughout the centuries. From Antiquity to the present , poets , writers, philosophers and various thinkers on the whole made contradictory assumptions, conjectures , explanations , extrapolations , comparisons and conclusions related to the story of Prometheus. But if one looks closer and in depth at how the story has been told , one can find patterns or variations specific to certain periods in the telling of the story across different centuries.

The punishment inflicted by Zeus has been called by some modern authors ‘problematic’. But it would be less problematic if the facts about what happened and if the details of the story were known better. One of the difficulties is that the details of this story became unclear and imprecise with the passing of time , especially after the beginning of the Christian era.

I have read extensively about this topic , and I will try to show by using reasonable and plausible arguments based on my readings of those who wrote about this subject that the reasons for and the cause of the chastening of Prometheus have been misunderstood and misinterpreted , and his importance has been inflated and overestimated , mainly during the last two centuries .

In the Theogony , Hesiod shows Prometheus as a lowly challenger of the omnipotence of Zeus and as a trickster.

In the Works and Days , Prometheus appears as the source of man’s misery. He is punished for using trickery , for stealing and breaking the law , and he is the one to blame for mankind’s fall.

It is to be noted that if the story of Prometheus has had a real earlier historical origin at its basis , then the oldest sources related to this story are usually the closest to the actual events that took place , and they show what happened in a more accurate way compared to later narratives. Therefore the story as it is told by Hesiod largely presented Prometheus in his true colors more than other more recent accounts that came up later on.

There are other clues that shed light on the way Prometheus was viewed in Antiquity.

When people in Antiquity deified someone and built temples for him (or her , but here we’ll suppose it’s a man we’re talking about) , it was their way of showing and recognizing that the one they deified had done great , outstanding and important things and had a significant historical greatness and importance.
Ancient writers , such as Lucian in the second century CE , stated the fact that for centuries before and during the start of the the Christian era ( a period of probably more than two millennia) there was no temple of Prometheus to be seen.
There was an altar for Prometheus and two other Olympian gods in Athens , but according to the classical philologist Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff , this altar was for another deity called Promethos, who was venerated during the torchlight run ,which celebrated the god of ceramics and not the fire giver. Promethos was the patron of potters in Athens , and was associated with Hephaestus and Athena. He was the one who would have helped Zeus by splitting his skull to give birth to Athena , and would have shaped Pandora before creating human beings (under the supervision of Zeus). He didn’t steal fire and he was not punished.

A second Prometheus did the trickery and the stealing and was punished. He is the Prometheus mentioned by Hesiod and Aeschylus , and his name later on prevailed. All the preceding arguments are proof that people in Antiquity knew Prometheus didn’t have greatness or historical importance, and that he didn’t help or benefit anybody by his theft of fire. It seems these facts and observations were overlooked by the romantic writers and the philosophers or artists who praised Prometheus in the 19th century.

By the way , the person or deity for whom the greatest and biggest temples and monuments were built in Antiquity , including a statue which was one of the seven wonders of the Ancient World , was Zeus/Jupiter.

The ‘fire’ stolen by Prometheus from the gods was most probably ordinary fire , but if it was some important property or material or discovery belonging to Zeus and to the ‘gods’ there is not much difference in the story.
In his book Les Mémoires de Zeus (The Memoirs of Zeus) , Maurice Druon gives an explanation of what might have happened. Prometheus tried to trick Zeus before stealing the fire , and Zeus decided to punish the mortal humans by taking away fire from them , but he intended to give back fire to the humans after a few months.

In any case Prometheus didn’t want to wait for Zeus to give back fire to humans , he was jealous of the power and abilities of Zeus and tried to trick him in order to hurt him or dethrone him and make him look bad , and there is no proof or mention, especially in the writings of the original ancient authors such as Hesiod , that after he stole fire he used it in a creative , beneficial or useful way for him or for the humans around him; the only ‘quality’ of the titan Prometheus mentioned by Hesiod through the theft of fire was trickery.

Even the play Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus was misinterpreted , since the author (if it really was Aeschylus ,who showed great praise , respect and admiration for Zeus in his other plays) was using irony, and as he made Prometheus talk in the play he intended to show him as conceited and delusional.

Prometheus could have very well played with the fire he stole (along with a number of other humans who were around him) with no useful or creative result , and after some time he let that fire die away.
What added to the confusion and misunderstanding is that the detailed facts and the sequence of events related to the theft of fire , to what happened afterwards , and to the so-called Titanomachy or war with the Titans were lost with time and are not well known.

The play Prometheus Bound was most probably written by Aeschylus ca. 415 BC (probably even earlier). It is interesting to note that at that period of time , poets and philosophers were writing works praising and honoring Zeus.

Cleanthes ( c. 330 BC – c. 230 BC) , Stoic philosopher and the successor to Zeno as the second head (scholarch) of the Stoic school in Athens, wrote a hymn to Zeus. The largest surviving fragment of Cleanthes is the portion of the Hymn to Zeus, in which he declares praise and honour of Zeus to be the highest privilege of all rational beings.

Callimachus (310/305–240 BC) was a noted poet, critic and scholar at the Library of Alexandria and enjoyed the patronage of the Egyptian–Greek Pharaohs Ptolemy II Philadelphus and Ptolemy III Euergetes. He also wrote a hymn to Zeus.

So it is improbable that at that time Aeschylus , who in all his other plays praised and extolled Zeus , could have written one play to damage and disparage the king of the gods. His play about Prometheus was filled with irony and enveloped in irony.

For many centuries after the beginning of Christianity, and until the end of the eighteenth century, writers did not have a high opinion of Prometheus. The interest in Prometheus in the seventeenth century was from philosophers.

Thomas Hobbes saw the Titan as the reprovable example of political rebellion and democracy ( Hobbes thought the only pure and true source of power was monarchy).

A number of writers in the nineteenth century as well as in the twentieth thought that the Fathers of the Church made a parallel between Jesus Christ and Prometheus. In fact the Church Fathers (among them Tertullian) warned against establishing any kind of parallel between Prometheus and Jesus Christ, and described Prometheus as some sort of impostor when compared to God.

Some writers or authors tried to find or make comparisons and similarities between Hephaestus and Jesus Christ , or between Hercules and Jesus , etc. These comparisons (especially the one involving Prometheus) are far from accurate.

Sometimes Prometheus has been compared to the character Loki in Norse mythology.Perhaps in Antiquity there was a common origin to Norse , Greek and similar mythologies which made them have some common characteristics, but it seems that Loki has been generally considered to be a bad trickster and a bad character , whereas Prometheus has been considered as a good trickster figure , this being the result of arbitrary unverified conjectures and interpretations , especially in the last two centuries.

The word Lucifer has been interpreted in different ways by different people , religions and cultures. When it was given the meaning of ‘shining one’ , ‘morning star’ , or ‘light bringing’ , Prometheus , having stolen fire and apparently brought light, has been sometimes compared to Lucifer , adding to the unclear and contradictory comparisons made about him. Anyway if Prometheus is Lucifer , who is usually considered to be Satan or the Devil , then in this case Prometheus would have rebelled against Zeus ,who would be no other than God. So this whole unconvincing comparison is not profitable to Prometheus and does not show him in a good light.

The theory or conjecture stating that Zeus punished Prometheus hastily while he was still a new inexperienced ruler , and then with time became wiser and more just , doesn’t hold water.

First of all ,there’s a big difference if we consider that the death of Zeus’s father and the theft of fire took place at the end of the Titanomachy or at the beginning of this war (which was won by Zeus). If the theft of fire took place after the death of Cronus and at the start of the conflict with the Titans, then this theft was an integral part of the conflict, and the punishment of Prometheus came as one of the results of winning this struggle. Zeus/Jupiter must have taken his time to try to reason with Prometheus and his father and brothers (to no avail), and he tried to observe (for a number of years during the conflict with the Titans) what Prometheus was doing with the thing he had stolen.
He must have noticed that Prometheus was playing carelessly with what he had stolen; if it was fire which was stolen , Prometheus probably kept it somewhere hidden in his house , making use of it in rudimentary uninventive ways with no creative or useful results , and when some people he knew came to his house he showed them that fire and played , danced or frolicked with them around it.

Prometheus wasn’t at all interested in benefiting humans or in innovative technology; it’s also possible that he could have obtained that fire by other means if he wanted, and humans possibly had basic or elementary ways to make fire. These humans could have represented all existing humans , or they probably were a local group of humans living in the vicinity of Prometheus , Zeus , and their relatives.In any case, Prometheus was envious of Zeus because he was the one who could make a really resourceful and innovative usage of fire, and by stealing fire he was trying to hurt Zeus.

If Zeus had seen that there was a good reason for or a beneficial purpose resulting from what Prometheus had done, or that there were attenuating circumstances in favor of the theft done by Prometheus , he (Zeus) would have been the first one to acknowledge it. But he must have found none.

There are two versions of what happened to the father of Zeus after he was defeated. One version says that after defeating his father , Zeus sent him to Tatarus or killed him.

Another version states that Cronus had bad and good traits, but his good qualities outnumbered his bad traits, and after Zeus helped his siblings, stood against his father and defeated him (it is best to assume this took place at the beginning of the war with the Titans) , he was reconciled with him and sent him to rule the Isles of the Blessed. Zeus surpassed his father and went beyond the abilities of his father. At the same time he must have taken or inherited the good qualities that his father had (and also inherited good qualities from his mother), which helped him become a good and just ruler afterwards. This version of the facts is more plausible than the first one.

On the other hand , Iapetus (the father of Prometheus) had more bad traits than good ones (arrogance, limited capabilities, haughtiness); he was defeated by Zeus and ‘sent to Tartarus’ at the end of the war with the Titans. Prometheus could not go beyond the potentialities of Iapetus , he stayed in the shadow of his father, and followed the old traditional narrow-minded ways of the Titans; he had his father’s bad traits and was punished with his brothers and father by Zeus .

Not all Titans were bad or were ‘sent to Tartarus’ by Zeus. Some Titans were good , but Prometheus was not one of the good Titans .

An example of a good (or not so bad) Titan (or Titaness) is the mother of Zeus ,Rhea, and alsoLeto/Latona, who gave Zeus two important children: Apollo and Artemis/Diana.

When the circumstances changed and the time was right, Herakles/Hercules freed and rescued Prometheus. Hercules did not do it in spite of his father Zeus, but according to his will and to his instructions. As Hesiod stated in the Theogony, Zeus wanted to give his son more glory by letting him free Prometheus.
It can be rightly said that when Zeus punished Prometheus it was justice , and when he released him it was (also) justice.

In addition to books (concerning ancient mythology and religion) I have read and mentioned in my page about religion related books , here are some more reference works related to this post:

— Divine Commerce: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Mythology , by John Kaessner.

This is probably another consequence of the fact that I read a lot. I usually start reading a book and go on reading until I finish it after a few days or weeks . Reading a science book obviously requires more concentration and rational analysis , and occasionally making calculations or solving some equations . But a number of times I began reading a book and finished some chapters or about half of it , then I lost interest or got busy and moved on to another book or another field of study. I always keep a bookmark or write down where I stopped reading in order to finish the book at a later date.I started to read a few of these books a few years ago without finishing them.Other books I began reading a few months or weeks ago.I have already listed books I have completely finished in my various book pages , and I’ll give here a list of books I have not completed reading to date ( December 2014). I will add these books to my books pages when I finish reading them.So here is a list of books I already began reading .This is not an exhaustive list:

I have a problem. Could be a problem , or not.The thing is , I read a lot , and in more than one language.

At present I know three languages very well , and I’ve read literary books and various kinds of books in these languages.But I have also other books and coursebooks for learning other languages , some are in print form and others are ebooks along with online learning material I’ve downloaded . Audio files are generally helpful while learning a new language.The three languages I know best are English , French and Arabic . I’ve studied and learned other languages intermittently , depending on the circumstances or on how much free time I had.

For example , a few years ago I met a Russian girl and I had a relationship with her , and that gave me the incentive to learn Russian.Then I met a German girl , and that encouraged me to start learning German using a coursebook I had bought two years earlier.I have a Spanish language coursebook as well , so I’ve studied recently the first few chapters of this book.Of course the Spanish language is interesting and useful since it is spoken not only in Spain but in most of Central and South America and in many countries around the globe.

I have additionally a Portuguese language coursebook waiting to be read , and a Chinese language textbook for beginners and a Chinese language learning software I haven’t used yet . Now the Portuguese and Spanish languages are more or less related to each other , but learning Chinese could be more difficult as it is a non-alphabetic language and uses characters such as logograms , pictograms and ideograms . I’ll have to see if or when I will have enough time to start learning these languages.

Moving to another group or type of languages , I’ve been using and working with the Mathematica software and the (Wolfram) Mathematica programming language for more than fifteen years , and I have occasionally used in the past programming languages such as QBasic and the BASIC-like language of the TI-92 Plus calculator. I have also studied web programming for a certain period of time , and I got to know well a number of programming (and scripting ) languages. These include HTML , PHP (and the MySQL database management system which uses the SQL query language) and JavaScript.

However , I have to say that among the languages I know the most important one is a language called Mathematics.This is the essential and fundamental language of the exact sciences , and according to good old Galileo , the mathematical language is the one in which the great book of Nature and the Universe is written.

And if you are of the opinion that Mathematics is not as important as other languages for communicating and connecting people , think again. From Astronomy and Astronautics to Physics and Chemistry to electronic devices and components (which use disciplines such as solid-state physics , circuit and signal analysis , differential and difference equations , Fourier analysis , etc) , to computers (which use fields such as Boolean algebra , binary logic , and combinatorics) , to Biology , Psychology , Economics and business studies , Mathematics and applied math are indispensable to any study or research in science and engineering . Programming languages are more or less related to applied , discrete and computational math and to mathematical logic. Even the social and human sciences use math and statistics to get a reputation for exactness , precision and scientificity .

I’ve had the intention of reading The Cleft by Doris Lessing for over a year , but it so happened that I started reading it a few days after I sadly learned she had passed away.

It’s a story about the origins of humanity told by a Roman historian ,supposedly taken from old forgotten records. Lessing claimed that she was inspired by a scientific article which said that female humans came first before males.Some would consider this as an inversion of the biblical creation narrative, but anyway it’s a good story to read , although scientific evidence for it is doubtful or lacking.The story tells that first women were lonely creatures living by the sea who used to give birth to baby girls by some sort of parthenogenesis , until one girl gave birth to a baby boy.The women were perplexed and got rid of that first baby boy , but then more boys were born and with time they formed a tribal group of their own . Some of the women went to meet them and got to know them despite the ban from the older females , so afterwards babies were born as a result of sex and a normal pregnancy.With time (perhaps a long time) the females and males ( who are called respectively ‘clefts’ and ‘squirts’, imagine why) learned to know each other better and lived together , and started exploring their surroundings.

Since I’m writing about Doris lessing I’ll take this occasion to say something related to her and to the education post I wrote earlier. According to her biography , Doris Lessing left school at 14 years of age , and was self-educated from then on.This is an example of a famous and important writer who had to be an autodidact for a (large) period of her life and who won many important literary prizes , including the Nobel prize for Literature , without having a formal higher education or a university degree. It’s not the (existing) educational system that makes the great writer (or great man or woman). More often than not great thinkers or intellectuals are the ones who create , manage or reform educational systems , either by getting personally involved or by influencing that creation or transformation through their actions , teachings and writings. Doris Lessing may have received an honorary degree at an older age , but this happened after she had to be self-educated and had to struggle and publish many books and novels in order to be recognized as a significant writer.

I’m going to mention suppositional events that could have been or could have happened , but in any case I want to note that if (for example) Lessing had had the possibility as a young girl to receive a convenient accelerated education and to go to college or to the university at the age of ten or eleven , she would have left formal education at the same age of 14 but with a degree in literature instead of no degree at all.This could be applied to many bright and able youngsters who get stuck in the educational system because of their fast intellectual development or have to leave it early for different reasons , and I think that is one of the advantages of an adequate accelerated education.

This also reminds me of something that happened to me about a year ago . My main fields of interest tend towards science and math , and I have sometimes taught private science lessons, but have also taught private English language lessons to students of various ages who needed it .Once I saw an ad about a school who needed an English teacher , so I called them to ask about the job requirements . I wasn’t sure I wanted it or had the time for it but just wanted to ask . The woman started asking me if I had a degree in literature , I tried to tell her I had a good experience in teaching private lessons and a very good knowledge of English , but she wouldn’t let me speak and insisted that I had to have a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature, and then we had to end the conversation . While I appreciate people who have college degrees and BAs , and I don’t presume to know everything , and there are always new things to be learned or discovered , I think my personal studies and readings allowed me to know English as much as someone having a BA degree , or even a little more ( you can take a look at a list of English literary books I have read in here).

I ‘m not comparing myself to a writer such as Doris Lessing , but I couldn’t help thinking that if Lessing or a writer of her importance (and her educational background) had had the idea to call that school like I have done , and had told them only that he or she had a very good teaching experience and very good knowledge of the English language but no degree , they would have rejected her or would have probably hung up.

Degrees and academic credentials are useful and important but sometimes it depends within which educational system or framework they are given , and too much insistence on diplomas alone without taking other variables and factors ( experience , the age factor in education being relevant ones among others) into account may turn out to be counterproductive and inadequate.